Money Strategies with Debbie

Investing In Women, I Ask Questions, Reverse Mortgage Stories, I Am The Money Whisperer, Why DLB Mortgage?

 

Money and retirement are two important talking points that tend to go hand-in-hand, especially as you begin to advance in life. Whether it’s mortgage or life insurance, so much of your retirement is dependent on the way you plan your financial future. Debbie Bloyd discusses some crucial financial subjects as they relate to retirement, and shares some encounters she has had with clients from various financial backgrounds. She also demonstrates how finding the right advisor is tantamount to having a secure financial future. Debbie can teach you how to financially equip yourself for the retirement you deserve, so don’t miss this vital discussion.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Investing In Women, I Ask Questions, Reverse Mortgage Stories, I Am The Money Whisperer, Why DLB Mortgage?

I can’t tell you how important it is to know where you’re going. Most of us don’t know where we’re going. When we think we do, we make a plan but I’m talking to the people that don’t even make a plan. Plans can change. I’m well aware of my plan. My plan has changed many times. We’re talking about money and finances as usual. We want to talk about it from a standpoint of, what is the vision you have for yourself? Before you get that vision and see it, feel it, and write it down, I don’t know where to take you. There are certain things that you have to answer. Here are four questions. Whether I look at a mortgage for you or I do your financial advising or we talk about IRAs or retirement funds, these are four questions we need to go over. If your financial adviser or mortgage person hasn’t asked you these four questions and they’re doing you a disservice, they’re not helping you. They’re an order taker and I want to help you because a lot of it is going to depend on you.

Number one, what do you want for your future? “I want to retire.” When do you want this to take place? Do you want it now or a later date? You go, “I’m thinking 65.” You’re going to retire at 65. What do you see for your retirement? Let’s paint a picture. What kind of house are you going to retire in? That has everything to do with what kind of mortgage you have and if we’re going to pay off your mortgage or not. If you’re going to move, transplant yourself, need a reverse mortgage or need a reverse mortgage purchase. Where are you going to live? Are you living in that house now? If you’re not living in that house, that’s good putting more money into it, and let’s do something different. Number two is when does this take place? When do you see this happening? Just because something happens in ten years, it doesn’t mean you need to be planning for it in ten years. You need to plan now to get where you want to be in ten years. You don’t want this to sneak up on you.

The next thing is, why is this important to you? For example, to answer the first question, “In retirement, I see myself vacationing, traveling, and taking my grandkids to the beach. Do I want to go to the beach here in the States? Am I going to Mexico? Is it going to be Brazil or New Zealand? How often am I going to do this?” You got to plan it out for me. You got to be vivid. If we fall short, then we can do something else. Tell me what you want and let’s figure out how to get you there. Why is this important? For me, my parents didn’t travel a lot. My goal is to travel a lot with my kids and to be in a position where I can travel with their kids, my grandkids. I want to go first class. I don’t want to economy it and not be able to afford to stay where I want to stay. That’s a priority for me.

Give me a window. When is this going to happen? When you’re 65? If this happened ten years earlier, is that okay? Instead of 65, I can make this happen at 55 or 60. What if it didn’t happen at 65, could you start this adventure at 70? That gives me a window and some parameters on how to handle your money. When you talk about your family, that’s an emotional talk. It’s important to know why you want to do these things. Why is it important that you retire? Because if not, you’ll just keep working. What is the point of all of this? If I can get this dream to happen for you the way you want it to happen, when you want it to happen, and where you want it to happen, do you want to do business with me? Those are the four questions that we need to cover.

 

How far are you going to take this? I take this the same way with every single client. I had a lady that wanted to retire. She didn’t know if she had enough money to retire but it turns out all she wants to do is knit. I’m like, “What?” She was like, “I want to knit. I own my house free and clear. I’m retiring from a job I’ve had for 30 years. I want to knit.” You’re in luck because you have enough money to retire comfortably and knit. If you’re going to knit in France twice a year, you might not have that kind of money. If you’re going to stay here in the States and the home that you’re in that you have free and clear, then sure, you can knit and you can retire. Once you answer these questions to me, for me, and with me, then we can start the discussion of how we’re going to get there.

There are different products that get you there. There are mutual funds, cash, CDs, annuities, and stocks. All of these things are available to you and I don’t know what to recommend until I run the numbers and I know what you want. Sixty-one percent of Americans fear running out of money, instead of fearing they’re going to die too soon. They think they’re going to live a long time and they’re not going to have enough money. You want to be an asset to your family, not a liability. What that means is you’ve got to have more money to keep you alive longer in the style that you want to, rather than moving with your kids and have them change your diapers. These are all things that we talked about.

There are a few things that you can invest in or with and we’re going to go through all of these. There’s an annuity and that gives you a guaranteed income for life or a set period of time. There’s something called stocks, bonds, CDs, and mutual funds. The guy that gave me this list goes, “Money in your wife’s wallet.” That’s never a good idea. Which of these solves which needs? Another big question is, do you want to pay taxes on your money now or do you want to defer it to later? Based on the answer to that question is going to tell me what type of products are available for you. You might need a little of all of these things. Stocks are not tax-deferred. They are if you are using money that you’ve already paid taxes on. If you’ve already paid taxes on it, you just pay tax on the stuff that you make, the profit.

If you haven’t paid taxes on it and you’re buying stocks, like inside mutual funds, then they could or could not be tax-deferred depending on what kind of money you use to buy them. CDs, you’ve got to pay taxes on the profit, but not on the principal. Bonds, the bond market is volatile and so is the stock market. We need to figure out the yield that you need to make, which is how much you’re going to earn on this money, the timeframe that you’re giving me to work with, and then how much risk you’re willing to take. A lot of times, you’re going to need a hybrid strategy, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. One of the things that you have to think about is, how does this make me feel?

Sometimes, financial advisors put you in products that you don’t fully understand and you’re too embarrassed to say, “I don’t understand what you’re doing,” so they go along with it. They’re mad when the money doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to work in that vehicle. What we do is talk about how do you want to grow? Do you want your money to grow heavily weighted into stocks? Do you want it to grow only a little bit at a time and that’s going to be closer to cash or bonds? It’s up to you on the timeframe and how much risk you’re willing to stake. There are reasons to be tax-deferred or qualified money and nonqualified money. There are reasons to pay single premiums and all this gets complicated.

We come back to the beginning statement. When do you want to retire? How much do you need to retire? Sometimes, I work the equation backward. I did that with a lady one time. She said, “This is how much I’m making in my job but I want to quit and I’ll get social security.” We did all these different things and I’m like, “Here’s what we think your salary is going to be. This is how you’re going to be paid out of all your sources of income. Let’s figure out what you need and then we’ll figure out if you need to spend the cash or save the cash and make the cash work for you.” There are lots of questions and it’s not easy to answer. Sometimes, you’ve got to sit down with me, then you’ve got to go home and think and then you’ve got to come back again and say, “This is what we’ve decided,” or “I’m still confused. Give me an example.” We can run scenarios for you.

If you’re with people that can’t talk to you like this, please give me a call. I talk about money and finances every single day in my practice and on the radio. I’d be happy to help. Let me give you my number. It’s (979) 220-3018. When you text me or call or leave a message, tell me what city you’re in. I do different shows in different cities. I need to know where I’m going to be and what time so I know if this is going to be a face-to-face or we’re going to talk on the phone or we’re going to do a video over the phone or on the computer, whatever we need to do. My email address is [email protected].

Zero Potential To Grow

Let’s talk about an article that I read about the gender investing gap. Simply put, women don’t invest as much money as men do, and they don’t invest it as early as men do either. Of all the assets women control both inside and outside their portfolios, women typically keep 71% in cash according to a survey by BlackRock whereas men hold 60%. Cash may feel like zero risks but it also has zero potential to grow as stocks do over time. Even with low inflation, the purchasing power of cash will decline over time so the price of certainty will get the cash high. How high? There’s a money census called Ellevest, which asked 1,000 women about all things money. Nearly half of the women weren’t even aware that there was an investing gap and when asked to estimate how costly it was to them, their average guess was about $113,000. It’s not even close. We ran some projections. The study said that based on the wage gap between men and women’s wages, we found out that the real cost of investing over a 35-year career span could be more than $1 million. That’s a lot of money.

They have these illustrations and the gap starts showing people from when they first started working at age 30, all the way up to age 65. Yes, the gaps were incredible. Conventional wisdom blames women for this gap. We receive messages all along that women are not as good at math as men. We’re not smart enough to understand investing and when it comes to situations, we sometimes see the worst where men don’t want to consider those options. What I’ve found in my practice is that a lot of women may have better ideas that problems are going to happen than men do and men don’t plan for problems. This was confirmed by a study by Fidelity, which analyzed the performance of over eight million retail clients in 2016. Typically, women outperform because they don’t overtrade, don’t panic in down markets, and don’t pay so much in fees. Forty-eight percent of women agree with the following statement. Most women have to work twice as hard to get half as much.

 

Let’s ask our advisors some crucial questions. If you don’t have an advisor, let me tell you the way advising works. I don’t get paid for giving advice unless you bring your money to me and let me help you invest it. I can charge a fee for my services but typically, I sit down and talk with you to find out if there’s even good communication and you like my style. I like your style. You don’t want to work with someone you can’t be honest with, share your hopes and dreams, and what you want your money to do. First, you need to make sure that a potential advisor answers these critical questions to you. This ensures that you have the same type of mindset when it comes to investing. Don’t hide fees, don’t chase the hottest trends, make sure your portfolio is diversified, and you need someone that personalizes your portfolio to meet your goals.

I have some clients that love Facebook and Google stocks. They’re traded publicly and a lot of people own them. A lot of people don’t like them and they don’t want to own them. A lot of people don’t like world companies. There are portfolios and ways to buy stocks and mutual funds that you’re not investing in things that you don’t either have a problem with or you don’t feel like they’re hurting the environment or hurting our families. There are benefits to finding an advisor that doesn’t have a pat answer for everybody. Women want more and they deserve a different type of work for their stocks and bonds. Typically, women are not as comfortable with a big level of debt. They want to know and learn more about their finances. Typically, we try to figure out our salary and compensation and we’re down to the nuts and bolts. Pennies matter to us.

Net worth individuals, women are not so concerned with the net worth in the end, but they want to make sure they’re protected against the downside. One of the things that we’re talking about in my practice is downside protection. The stock market’s been an all-time high for many years now and we are poised to take a hit with our stocks and our mutual funds, and anything that’s in the market. How do we protect against that? You don’t have to ride the market down. You can move your money to safer products. If you want more information about how to do that before the bottom falls out, call me and I’d be happy to help. There are insurance products. There are all kinds of funds that you can put your money in that is less volatile when the market drops. You need to move some of that money out of the market totally if you don’t want to lose money.

Usually, when the market goes down and goes down across, whether they’re large stocks, small stocks or mid-cap funds, the whole market is going to go down. You need to get into cash or an insurance product that will help you diversify your problems with losing money in the market. If you do not have time for the market to rise back up in 10 to 15 years, then you need to get something safer now before the bottom does start showing itself. I’ve been a financial advisor for several years now. I work with a great team of individuals, CFPs, which are certified financial planners that have a wide range of products to serve. It’s important that you find someone that’s independent to work with rather than just someone at a “mainstream company” because those companies only have their products to sell. It’s better, like insurance, to find an independent agent so that someone can shop across the board with all different types of products and companies so that you do have the best pick of all the choices. Not just the choices they’re presenting.

If you’d like a second opinion on your portfolio or how to hedge your money against downside protection, which is all we want. We all want downside protection in the upcoming market swing. Please give me a call or email me. My email address is [email protected] or my direct number is (979) 220-3018. Please call me if I can help. Women, if you have special questions that your financial advisors aren’t helping you with, give me a call. I do work with everyone. I’d be glad to explain it, give you information and make you more knowledgeable when it comes to the investing process.

Life doesn't always go to plan, so you have to be ready for anything. Click To Tweet

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We talked about money in retirement and everybody goes, “How can you keep talking about money in retirement all the time?” Because it’s super important. For some reason, it’s down in my core as something that I’m worried about and I’m worried about it for everybody. Even if you’re not worried about it, I’m worried about it for you. I’m a financial advisor and I do mortgages. I’m trying to find a better description of what I do because people come to me and they don’t always know what’s wrong. I feel like I’m a diagnoser of all kinds of problems. Maybe they’re saving money for retirement and what they should do is put some money aside in a long-term care policy or a disability policy. What happens if they have a stroke or cancer? How are they going to supplement their income? What would annuity be like?

Before You Need It

I can walk you through all your choices and things that are pertinent to your situation. I try to help you make decisions that are not totally emotional decisions, but financial decisions. The time to do that is before you need it. I’ve got stuff in place, so when things happen, I just go ahead and work the plan. Hopefully, a lot of those things won’t happen but as you and I both know, life doesn’t always go to plan, so we have to be ready for anything. I am in no way a social security expert. I do have information and if you want to call me, I’ll be happy to provide you the information I have for social security. I’m more of an expert on IRAs and 401(k)s and no, that’s not going to do anything by itself. You’re going to have to move that over when you retire to an IRA. You might want something like an annuity and some of you may have bad ideas about annuities. An annuity is an insurance product that gives you income for life.

The income for life it provides you is based on two things. Number one, how much does the annuity have in it? You can put $10,000 or $1.5 million in it. You’re going to get a different income when you turn the spigot on for the income. Also, what are you invested in? There are annuities that pay 1.5%. I’m not going to tell you the companies. You can talk to me if you want to know more but the premise is, annuities can be fixed and they give you a guaranteed rate. That means a floor. No matter what the market does, it can’t go below a certain number. That is encouraging and helpful for some families that are conservative and do not want to play and roll the dice like Vegas with their money to retire. They might want a fixed annuity that gives them a fixed amount of money for life. They can have it for their life, for them and their spouse or for their beneficiary.

They all do different things. This is not a be-all-end-all. This is part of the retirement planning process. What do you have? What can you turn it into when you retire so that you know what you can make? That’s the question. We talked about social security. Social security has a lot of different opinions on when you pull it and you start money bringing money out of it. I would rather take it sooner than later. What if you die and you’ve waited until you’re 70 to take social security when you could have used it for years and put that money aside? Maybe that social security money you “don’t need,” you could invest in an insurance plan for your kids or something that will pay upon your death. There are all kinds of ways of moving money around from taxable to tax-free for your heirs and yourself.

One of the articles I read talked about the bonus for delaying social security. This is crucial. They said, “If you take benefits at age 70 rather than 62, the monthly benefit is 76% higher,” but that’s thinking that you’re going to live a lot past 70. This is all on, what do you think is going to happen to you? What do you think of your family’s life? My dad lived to 89 and my mom in her mid-70s. It’s probably somewhere in between for me. You also want to make sure that you have your investments inflation-protected. What I mean by that is I have an inflation rider on some of my life insurance so that the benefits go up by 3% or you could choose 5% every year. That’s to keep pace with inflation. I have a long-term disability policy that has an inflation rider of 3% on it. That means that yes, I’m investing the money in today’s dollars but they’re going to go up automatically by 3% every year in addition to what I’m earning in the market with it because I want that inflation rider.

 

“What’s it going to be like when I need it in twenty years? I don’t want it to be worth half of what I bought it for. That’s not a good use of my money.” I need to at least keep up with inflation. A lot of people are scared about politics and the government. I’m here to tell you I’ve got charts and graphs that I can prove to you that no matter if the republicans are in or the democrats are in, the stock market is still the stock market. The stock market is apolitical. If we have a war, it messes things up. If we bomb somebody, it’s going to mess things up. If the overall health of our businesses are growing and expanding like they have been and they’re going to in the next few years under relaxed tax and spending provisions that got passed, you’re going to see the stock market continue up. Will it have corrections? Yes. Can it get higher? Yes. Will it go lower? Of course. Will it bounce back? Yes. It always does. I don’t know how low it’s going to go. I don’t know when this is going to start happening. I don’t know a lot. I don’t have a crystal ball but I have statistics that show what has been done in the past.

What you can see is that we’re long overdue for a drop in the market. That is supposed to make some people nervous and other people are fine with it. The government, who’s in charge doesn’t matter as much as the feeling of the economy. Another thing to talk about in your retirement is your home. It’s your biggest asset, but you can use it as income if you get a reverse mortgage. Reverse mortgages got some bad press. I’ve been doing reverse mortgages for several years and it’s changed a lot. There is an index inside the reverse mortgage if you leave money in it that grows attached to this index fund. You’re making money inside your reverse mortgage and with the appreciation of your home going up, the interest on your loan will be going up. The loan will also be going up, which means you owe money. The goal of all this is to make the interest on the inside of your reverse mortgage grow faster than the loan going down so that you offset each other and you’re winning.

I would love to sit down and show you individually how this is going to work for you. I’m going to be holding workshops every month on reverse mortgages and how to defer your property taxes. Not pay your property taxes, but defer them after a year or at the age of 65. If you have questions about your social security benefits, how that’s going to work with your retirement, and what is your retirement going to look like, please give me a call. This is what I do. I’m a financial whisperer, trying to figure out what is needed in your equation based on your exact circumstances. Every case is individual and they’re all unique.

Not one thing can fix everyone or help everyone and not one thing is the answer, so individualized attention. I’m a fiduciary and I’m going to do what’s in your best interest. A lot of people bring me their information and I help them organize their 401(k) plans that they already have with their employer. The big question is, do you get paid for that? No, I don’t but I still do it so that when you retire, you’ll allow me to help you make the money that I’ve already made grown bigger. It’ll be under our guidance and we’ll be able to make it even more of what you need for your retirement. My phone number is (979) 220-3018.

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If you go to my website, you’re going to see a blog of information. Some of it is insurance, health insurance, life insurance, and how to know what policy you need. Also, I cover mortgage things because I’ve been in the mortgage business for many years. I still do mortgages. On this show, I want to use some examples and stories from my real-life practice and maybe that will help you maybe make better decisions about your money or at least think about options for yourself. Reverse mortgages have changed a lot in the last couple of years that I’ve been doing them and now, I do a couple of reverse mortgages a month. It’s not always the people in the families that you would think. What we’re finding is even though you’re maybe living in your home and you have it paid off, you don’t always know what’s going to happen. You don’t think you’re going to need access to that money that’s in your home. Your home is paid off, you have your bills under control, and you’re living on a budget, but then something happens. It could be a heart attack or a stroke. All of a sudden, you need to shift the way you think about your money and you’re getting stressed that it’s going to run out.

There are all kinds of ways of moving money around from taxable to tax-free for your heirs and for yourself. Click To Tweet

My first story that I want to talk about is what happened to a lady over in Georgetown, a client. She’s got two rental properties in a home, they’re all paid for free and clear, and she gets rental money from both of those rental properties. She has no problem with the renters and she likes her situation. What she’s found out is that she’s dwindling her money faster with rising bills, rising taxes, and she can’t raise rents. I know if you’re a landowner or a property owner here in town, you’re going to see the same thing. Rental static is going down and taxes keep going up. She is trying to head off a problem. The problem that she called me about was, “Debbie, I don’t want to sell one of my rental properties and live on that money. I’d rather keep those producing. What is another way I can access my money?” We started talking about a reverse mortgage. Not that she was in dire straits or anything. It’s just that she wanted that money in a line of credit.

She came to a workshop that I had in Georgetown and she goes, “This line of credit is interesting. Tell me about it.” As a financial advisor, I’m talking to other financial advisors and CPAs to access money in your home. If you don’t need the money out right away, you’re not going to spend it. You just want it there as a cushion in case. We set that up as a line of credit and you’re earning about 5% interest on that money every year that’s tied to a LIBOR index. In her case, she’s not doing a reverse mortgage because she’s in dire straits, she’s doing a reverse mortgage so that she has money that earns interest and is available like a checking account. Anytime she would need the money, she just calls the 1-800 number customer service and tells them to wire money to her bank. She can set it up as a lump sum every month. She gets $1,000 or whatever money she needs like a salary, or she can just take money every quarter. She can take money when she needs it.

A lot of seniors are finding that they have a gap in their income from what pensions and 401(k)s might provide and what they want to live on after social security. They would be much more comfortable if they had another $600 or $700 a month to live on. That is what a reverse mortgage can be used for. You have to be 62 years of age or older and you have to have enough equity in your house to make the numbers work. The information that I need is your name, your address so I can look at a value and your birth date year. I don’t have to have your exact birthday but your year because I’ve got to figure out how much equity has to stay in the house. I’m not a guru with this, but there is a software program that we all use and that helps me figure out exactly what is ready for you. That is on a reverse mortgage, the regular way that you’re used to hearing about it. I’ve done two reverse mortgage purchases. You’re like, “Debbie, I didn’t know you could do a reverse mortgage on a purchase. How does that work?” The same basic information. You give me your birthday and you tell me the price of the house you want to buy.

If you’re over the age of 62, depending on how close you are and age to 100 as you age, you put less and less money in that purchase. I had a lady that sold her house here in College Station for about $300,000. She bought a cute little house down in Katy for about $200,000 but she didn’t pay all $200,000. She’s 80 years old, so she paid about $120,000 for that $200,000 house. Slowly, that $120,000 will go down, but she pocketed the rest of the money and invested it. Instead of spending all that money, she has $120,000 as a cushion. This makes her feel good because her husband passed away and she’s concerned that she won’t have enough money now that she’s on her own. Sometimes, the benefits and pension stop and it’s not easy to make it on one income. That was a great thing for her. I also did this long for a lady moving from Oklahoma to Kingwood. She wanted to purchase a house and she had horrible credit, but she had a lot of equity stored up in her house that she had. She just had to sell it.

We did a reverse mortgage purchase for her. She was able to buy a $300,000 house for a little over $150,000 and keep the rest of that money aside. That money should get invested in mutual funds or just put it in our savings account. Even though it wasn’t earning interest, it was a cushion for her. It was a safety net. I did talk to a lady one time on the phone that I tried to explain the ins and outs of the reverse mortgages and get her information. Fairway Mortgage puts out brochures. I sit down with you, I give you a proposal and we go through each page, so you understand the ins and outs of the money. She was still saying, like a lot of people believe, that the bank gets your house in the end and people are foreclosed upon the right and left on a reverse mortgage. She doesn’t want that to happen. The only reason you could be foreclosed upon on a reverse mortgage is if you don’t pay your taxes. A reverse mortgage is set up specifically designed to keep you in that house until you die. That way, when you pass away, your heirs sell the house and the remaining money in the house goes to them after the mortgage is paid off. If there is nothing left after that, FHA comes in and picks up the difference. If you owe money, the FHA pays that because it’s an FHA loan. They make sure the lender is always protected.

 

I know this has a lot of information and I would love to explain it to you individually if I can help. If you have parents that are getting into a money crunch, I had some adult children call me, concerned that their parents were too expensive for a house and not able to make the payments. We talked about a lot of different scenarios. What we came up with is they need to sell their big house and use the money that they get out of that to purchase a reverse mortgage on a smaller home. That way, they don’t have any payments at all and they can live comfortably on their social security.

Not Every Family

Not every family has pensions. Not every family has 401(k) money or IRAs to draw down on. Before your parents get into a problem and lose their house to foreclosure, please call me and let me talk to them. I’m licensed in the State of Texas and Florida for reverse mortgages. It’s easy for me to refer business to other people in other states. I would love to be able to help save seniors the stress. Everybody wants to stay in their own home but what’s happening is we’re running out of money.

I talked to one client and she said she had no use for a reverse mortgage because she was healthy and she was 80. You don’t die when you’re healthy. Something is going to happen to each and every one of us. Whether it’s a stroke or a heart attack or not going to function as good as we used to. We don’t even have to get a disease. We just have to age. We’re going to need help in caring for ourselves. Either our children have to do it or we have to hire help to come in and do it. Either way, wouldn’t it be nice if you had money and some cushion so that you know you could hire someone to come in while you age and you can age in place? Please call me if I can help you or your loved ones with anything talking about money and finances and how to make that money stretch.

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Let’s talk about money when it comes to how to spend your money wisely on a mortgage. I know a lot of people shop around. The reason I’m talking about this is it comes out of my daily work. I had a gentleman call the office one time, buying a new home and moving here from Colorado. He doesn’t understand how to shop for a mortgage and hasn’t had a new mortgage in about twenty years. He said, “My credit union can do a good job but my agent referred me to you and said that you’re the person. What makes you different?” I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this on the show often, but I started my own business. I used to have my own mortgage company and went to the net branch model. I’m back in the solo world as a sole proprietor of DLB Mortgage Services. The reason I’ve done that is that I worked with banks.

Everybody Has A Niche

I’ve worked with everyone, but everybody has a niche and they just stay in their lane. Banks do vary in the bank’s loans. There’s not a lot of options but they do a lot of land loans. I still work with banks to do land loans and construction loans locally and out of town. My territory has spread out through Austin, Houston, and Dallas. I travel and I work with different agents in different areas. The customers, though say the same things, “What makes you different?” Number one, I’m on call 24/7. Now that my kids are in college I have more time to work, which is what I do and I love it. I meet with families at nights on the weekends, often in Dallas, to talk to them about their mortgages and we do a lot of technology. We do a lot of Zoom talking over the internet. We do a lot of phone talking and a lot of emailing back and forth. Sometimes, it’s just the old fashioned face-to-face. What they want to know is, what makes you different? As a broker, I’ve signed up with about fifteen different lenders and they all do different things.

Friday was a day for me to do a little bit of all of those things. I had two closings here in College Station. I had three people that I was working on bids for their mortgage and one was a VA. This one is interesting because he was a veteran. All veterans feel that they need to go VA, but let me tell you the pluses and minuses of this. If you go VA, you have to pay a funding fee. If you don’t have 10% or more disability, you have to pay a funding fee on this loan, which is 3% of the loan amount to the VA. We want to go VA. You’re eligible for that. Also, the VA is great if you don’t want to put money down but if you want to put money down, a conventional loan may be better for you. That way, you’re not paying the funding fee, you have better rates because VA is great at 0% down. USDA is also great for 0% down. Everything else is going to require some kind of payment. I was closing loans and I had a gentleman shopping for VA, and he had an interesting situation. He’s a grad student at A&M and he is getting ready to move to Houston with a job, but he doesn’t have great credit because he doesn’t believe in credit.

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This is where the catch in the rub comes in. If you don’t have any credit, you have to have a score of some kind or you have to have at least some extenuating circumstances for even VA to take you on. There are also loans that are subprime, and we don’t use those terms anymore. They’re called non-QM and those are loans that are less than 620 in credit scores. Yes, those are still available. Some lenders I work with go down to 500. I don’t have to turn people away. I can say, “I know you don’t have a 620 but I’ve got a place for you.” When I worked at the bank with some of my other lenders, I did not have a place for them. Going out on my own has enabled me to say, “Yes, more.” I hate to disappoint people. I’m a real people pleaser, which is not always great in your personal life but it’s great when it comes to satisfying your customers and getting them the best rates going. I worked on a VA loan.

His interesting part was he also did not have a job yet. He was a grad student. He graduates in December and does not start his first job until January 15th. He wants to move into a home before he gets his first paycheck. That is not available on a VA loan. We’re doing a lot of things and a lot of moving parts. We’ve got to check your credit score. We’ve got to find a program that you fit in based on your credit score and then we have to consider these extenuating circumstances like, “Are you going to have a paycheck or not?” In the State of Texas, you need a paycheck or you need to prove that you’ve been pulling money out of securities or money markets or whatever it is for at least the last two years and have a track record. He was a difficult case. What we decided to do was pay off a few of his student loans that would raise his credit score up. They’re going to look for a house in Houston and we’re going to see where that puts him credit score-wise to find out a VA. VA is our minimum of 620, so we have to make sure that he has that 620 credit score, and find the right deal for him.

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Another thing that we did was talk to a client in Colorado. A gentleman from Colorado had not had a mortgage in the last twenty years. He did not understand what credit unions can do rather than banks and why it’s important to choose a local lender than his real estate agent and title companies know. He did not understand the importance of if something goes wrong. Number one, I have a relationship with that title company and that real estate agent. I don’t want anything to happen to it. I’m wanting to do my best. A credit union in Colorado has nothing to lose if they do not satisfy the customer, the title company and the real estate agent. It’s always best to pick someone local. The other thing is, what do we, here in Texas, do when it comes to closing costs? How are they handled differently than in Colorado? It’s important to choose a local under me or someone else if you’ve got people moving here to Texas. Laws are different, licensing is different, and not every title company wants to use out of town lenders. Most of them don’t. It’s another great reason to call DLB Mortgage Services.

If you have questions about what DLB Mortgage Services can do for you, please give me a call. We do VA, FHA, conventional, and construction loans. We work with local banks and we also do your permanent financing. We are able to do these things called non-QM loans, which are low credit scores. Maybe you are self-employed and don’t have the W2s to prove your income. We do bank statement loans. That is a great thing for self-employed borrowers. What you do is take 24 months of your bank statements, all pages, we added the deposits and the lender does all the number work, all the dividing and all the adding. They use their formula to determine your income, then we use that income to qualify you for a mortgage. It’s a great way to get a mortgage if you’re self-employed, so don’t wait. Don’t let not knowing how to get a mortgage. Stand in the way of taking advantage of these great interest rates we have. Please give me a call. My company is DLB Mortgage Services. I have an office over off of Fitch. I also have an office in Dallas and I’m in Austin a lot of the time. I do travel but my phone is with me every single day. My number is (979) 220-3018. Thank you so much.

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